Category Archives: LDVUSA

Mark Pack

What’s happening in Iowa?

By Mark Pack | Fri 21st December 2007 - 10:11 pm

The Mystery Pollster blog has a good summary of the latest poll findings in Iowa, the first state to vote in the procedure for selecting Democrat and Republican candidates for next year’s American Presidential election.

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Mark Pack

New Jersey abolishes the death penalty

By Mark Pack | Tue 18th December 2007 - 8:11 am

The state of New Jersey has become the first US state to abolish the death penalty in over thirty years.

In an interesting footnote to this news, one of the people who has as a result had their death sentence turned into life imprisonment is Jesse Timmendequas, whose murder of Megan Kanka resulted in the so-called “Megan’s Law” which some people have often campaigned for in Britain.

CNN has more.

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Richard Huzzey

Introducing LDVUSA

By Richard Huzzey | Mon 10th December 2007 - 4:46 pm

As the 2008 Presidential election approaches, Lib Dem Voice is looking to expand its coverage of American politics and the coming contest.

We’re particular looking to offer analysis and insight from a Lib Dem perspective. For example, will “states rights” (i.e. decentralisation) always be seen as a Republican issue? We know which party is more “liberal” in U.S. language, but which is more liberal by our standards?

If you’re a Lib Dem member living in America and following the 2008 race, we’d like to hear from you about writing for LDVUSA, our new series looking at the race. Please drop …

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Mark Pack

How well did the Democrats really do?

By Mark Pack | Sat 18th November 2006 - 10:05 pm

Unlike the UK, aggregate vote share figures across the US are rarely reported. But there have now been some unofficial calculations, which put the vote share in House of Representative elections at:

Democrats 51%
Republicans 47%

(Figure from MyDD.com, which also has more details.)

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Mark Pack

Voting machines: a warning from the US

By Mark Pack | Sun 12th November 2006 - 10:08 am

There have been lots of tales from America about problems with electronic voting machines in the mid-term elections, but my favourite example is this one – where a candidate was recorded as getting zero votes even though he’d gone and voted for himself.

Two things are common across many of the stories – the absence of a proper paper-based audit trail to check things if the machine comes up with a suspicious result and the reluctance on the part of officials running elections to believe their machines may have got it wrong. They are both important factors to look out …

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The Voice

US mid-terms: best of the Lib Dem blogs

By The Voice | Wed 8th November 2006 - 10:13 am

Here’s a quick round-up of the best Lib Dem commentary on the mid-terms

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The Voice

All through the night: your guide to the mid-term election results programmes

By The Voice | Tue 7th November 2006 - 1:55 pm

If you’re planning on staying up tonight to pray for a Democratic revival in the U.S., we hope you’ll find these listings helpful:

  • On Radio 4 from 12:30am-5:20am James Naughtie and Shaun Ley present election night coverage from the U.S.
  • From 8pm 18 Doughty Street’s programming focusses on the election, and is extended by two hours to 2am with election news.
  • From 3am, BBC News 24 picks up the baton and at 6am they hand over to BBC Breakfast news

Sky’s listings don’t suggest an election special, but their listings often don’t bear any resemblance to what is broadcast. I’ve just switched it on to see if they’re advertising anything. If they do, I’ll update this post.

UPDATE: Sky election special from midnight

Also, keep your eye on Video the vote, a project to monitor problems with the electoral process by posting video evidence to YouTube.

Will Howells has a concise intro to what exactly is up for grabs tonight.

Our Boston correspondent

Liberal Democrat Councillor Paul Elgood is currently out in Boston, USA. He sent us this update:

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